Writing of the Creative Kind

Inspiration is but fleeting:

A flinching moment in the night.

Its carnal tongue preceding

The shiftless cardinal sin of SIGHT

So with these winds of discontent

I’ll wander aimlessly in search

Of rabble-rousing wonderment

To inflame these embers wracked

With soot.

Because in your absence, in this wake

A flame refuses to unfurl.

IT languishes in malady

Tepid in its stubborn coil

And in this flaccid freedom,

I’m untended in respite.

As in this tone-deaf melody,

An opus spurns its heights.

So please, dear boy, return this way:

Come frighten me to life.

Woman: You may be a shadow known as Kerouac Steinbeck Celine. I see similarities as people and prophets. Maybe that merely means you’re a writer, as they were.

Man: That was a very lovely thing to say. You are beautiful.

Woman: Thank you, sir.

Man: You already knew that though, right?

Woman: Sometimes.

Man: Coyness is becoming.

Woman: Coyness? More like the assessment of a self critical writer. You know what that’s like.

Man: Possibly. Well, then I will boost your ego so you don’t have to.

Woman: Hhhmmm…I’ll allow that, I suppose.

Man: You suppose? I will not accept suppose.

Woman: Alright then, sir: you have free rein.

Man: Thank you. Even though you seem reluctant. 

Woman: I’m just a cautious gal these days. But seeing as you have precedent, well, it’s fair to assume you’re a safe haven.

Man: Caution is good. I would hate to catch you off guard; it would ruin my image of you. And yes, I am a haven.

Woman: My guard is rarely off. And god forbid I ruin images. Yes, you are a haven for some things.

Man: Some things.

Woman: Yes. The others are the ones that I hold; Me, Myself, and I.

Man: Fair enough. I’ll take what I can get.

Woman: You and me both.

Man: You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?

Woman: Eh…words just flow when you’re on the other end of a thought. Not clever, just receptive.

Man: Well, I think you’re clever. And elusive.

Woman: Thank you, sir. I’m only elusive to people who see ghosts.

Man: I guess that’s me.

Woman: I guess it is. I do live in the same city as you.

Man: You do. Maybe we should serendipitously run into one another.

Woman: I do adore that word: serendipitous. But I have little faith in things that are fated because I’ve no patience for broken promises. I live here and now.

Man: I’m thinking I should read into that message.

Woman: No. It’s all just words. Sparring, if you will. Click your heels three times and I may appear.

Man: Click. Click. Click. So…

Woman: Ha. Click them when I’m not in the southern part of the state.

Man: Fuck. I though magic wasn’t confined to regions?

Woman: Well, click them when you actually want to see me. Even magic has its realities and preferences.

Man: I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to see you. Magic is not nearly as cool as I thought. 

Woman: Tell me about it. Well, I spend my Monday’s writing and reading in the secluded park off the lake. You could magically see me there, feasibly.

Man: I could. It’s far, but I could. Is there a time that would be best for a magical encounter?

Woman: Around noon. Provided you arrive by unicorn.

Man: Planning on it. And then you can meet my new pet: Do-do bird.

Woman: I’m not sure whether or not I’m hoping that’s a mataphor.

Man: Is that like  Spanish comparison: mataphor? And you should hope it is.

Woman: I do enjoy a good bullfight as the sun also rises. Good luck finding me. I’ll be the girl surrounded by linguistic fairy dust.

Man: Sounds hot.

Woman: That’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Man: Well, these eyes think so.

Woman: Thank you, kind sir’s eyes. 

Man: They say “You are welcome.”

And what if I see you

Standing on the corner of that busy street

Not far from your home

             Lips slightly parted

                  In anticipation 

                         Of that faithful Cigarette?

I will mouth “I’m Sorry”

And watch you walk away.

Because I’m not the woman that you want in tow

As you rattle amongst your rubble.

Every woman harbors a fragment of Gilda within them.

Our bodies are our pawns, our zippers autocratic.

And we despise the men we love.

Because the men we love despise themselves.

The next branding is nigh.

As we stray and straighten the curve of our spines

In preparation for some unholy communion of minds

With its unattached perils

Its preacherless podiums

And unfettered agendas

Every maker has his mark.

The next branding is nigh.

There had been a fight. About dust-bowls and glass menageries.

Some of her pages had been torn in the process. Ink was now misconstrued.

So she made him exit her disheveled twin-cab.

He was swallowed whole in the night,

Folded into its turgid presence.

As street lamps stood idly by.

Monolithic watchmen in the fog.

Remnants of the break in days.

Placation and Separation in this tempestuous calm had taught her not to right wrongs.

Not look behind.

Not to stare ahead.

But she’ll testify. She will speak.

One cannot reason with silence. And the library was deathly ill with it that evening.

Librarians are 21st century social workers; their case load this evening was particularly plush.

Bill Withers. Nina Simone. Robert Johnson. Herman Melville. Sylvia Plath. Aldous Huxley.

The city air moved sedentary objects in spasms outside the nearest window; books did the same to the drug addict seated in the farthest chair.

She was having trouble concentrating and her own spasms belied this: legs twitching, heart burning, fingers twisting.

One cannot reason with silence.

There had been an incident at the stable; Martha wasn’t able to move her 80 year old joints in time, and her face and neck had suffered dearly for it. Fractures. Contusions.

So, in actuality, far more square footage was affected by this illness. Silence had swept across her terrain.

And when the spasms stopped, all movement was utterly suspended. Impulses were denied. Desires atrophied.

One cannot reason with silence.

Again and again she had watched tragedy, both minor and catastrophic, cloak her surroundings. Time and Time again she had picked up the remains and moved forward. 

Every time the same. This time, however, was different. This time she could claim no hand in the carnage. This time she could claim no hand in the recovery.

To endure this immobility, she went to the library–the last bastion of promulgated silence. To be its ally. 

Because one cannot reason with silence.

Her eyes disconcert their brown. This the first indication, a

readiness to engage, obvious intelligence, which, combined with her complexion,   

heightens the factory noise.

Fan blades strobe the light in the rafters. 

By concentrating I can hear 

my own voice, a reminder

to be serious. 

She stands loose-jointed not really listening. 

Safety regs. 

OSHA. 

Comp.

I feel myself slow down

Her nametag’s obliterated 

by oil, hair pulled under 

her hat. Despite coveralls, 

I can trace the shape of her body.  

The body expresses an idea of the shape of the person inside.  

Dominic the semi-retard beside 

her has been injured twice. First 

by a flat of iron that fell off 

some forks near the dock, second 

when he let his finger stray 

into the shear-press.  Less 

than 600 dollars sick 

pay and it couldn’t 

be reattached.

For a moment she seems to acknowledge me.

It’s like watching sheetglass collapse.  

There are lights on right now in rooms where loved ones no longer live; there is movement that traces the spectral recesses of past movements. But those halls don’t whistle and moan like they once did; the air is permeated with a distinctly new effervescence. 

We pull and we break. Our tidewaters recede in a process that’s forgotten to pair a flow to its ebb. We stop and stare at open doors and unencumbered passageways with incredulous immobility, yet practically impale ourselves on the victorian knockers of the doors that are closed to us–we make ourselves the battering rams, we choose the presence of a foe.

Regardless of clutter, regardless of the vain attempts to occupy every bit of space around me in order to keep something unquantifiable at bay, I found myself mired in it. Things had surrounded me; people had abandoned me; regrets accumulated. The price of these insulating materials had gone up, driven by speculation and pivoting on a recessed market that inspired nothing; frequently undue panic became the harbinger of all the uncontrolled elements that existed around me–the very plasmatic particles that built the air through which I waded.

I foresaw nothing and began to want less, which was the key to surviving this tainted fray, this dishonorable fracas. Who I was didn’t translate well to the dailies, so I concocted a Self that did. I was thorough in my transformation.

Even when Lem’s thugs dragged Jones from the forest

I didn’t believe him dead. His long body, meat now,

and in that heat swollen by dusk. The garish epaulettes, 

the ridiculous sash, gone.

Not even boots. That’s it then, I thought, 

no gunboat to Martinique.

Some mornings I’d find him on the terrace, rambling. 

That Irishman, he would say, just wrote it; I 

am the Emperor Jones. He drank and shouted parts from MacBeth,

threw bottles at the boy, demanded we play dice. How 

he loathed my white skin. 

In his wicker chair, dripping sweat, 

he told me I was a ghost.

In a Water Street pub a rummy named Walters reported Jones had survived.

He left the island on a tramp for Havana and was sighted in New York

on a streetcar or in an opium den.

I didn’t know what to believe. 

Then Walters remarked the Irishman.

A tall man who coughed as he drank brandy-soda

bragged in a bar he owned Brutus Jones.

‘I made that black bastard a king,’ he said

just before he walked out.

I left the island a fortnight after the Americans landed. 

They quickly disarmed Lem’s army

though it is said his nephews escaped.

Boarding the launch I saw 

a line of natives strung 

together with rope, waiting 

while a marine 

issued them shovels and picks.

In a doorway, a woman

bobbed, 

tucking a child behind her skirt. 

The barefoot policeman rested,

next to a wagon of ice.

What allows us to fix our eyes firmly on the horizon despite the illogical, mind numbing pain of existence, the laborious process of breathing? Heaven and hell are barely deterents as the threat of either are pale reflections of our own ineptitude, our own inability to seek wholeness on earth in the here and the now. This world, however, is breathtaking- both negatively and positively. It’s true, the pressure of our surroundings can be exhausting with the steam wilting our lives, our souls. But its the humidity that keeps our gaze uplifted, looking onward albeit with slight immobility.

He is that cool breeze that lulls me in chaos of those hot hot Los Angeles nights. The dew on my lips, the gauze over my lids- the thick black molases that highlights the softest of my edges, sludged into the recesses of my fears and insecurities and affording me sweet respite. In his pain I hear the tender hum of clarity- my counterweight, my palindrome. He is beautiful, he is rare and he is also not mine to love. He is the orbit I’ve sought my entire life, but I’m still a sphere amongst myself unable to be leashed.

Infinite octaves of aesthetics and density, rapidity and light, serenity and delineation- unbridled, complex, and replete with the brevity of disdain.

His heritage, his heart, his singular allegorical gaze will forever hold me. It’s the way he moves with a self conscious, humble precision and an ebuillient two-step charge. It’s the simple integrity of the ink that claims his skin. Most importantly, it’s the way he is able to know me merely by knowing himself.